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Quickies

Since getting involved with atheist activism, which was my first introduction to online social justice circles, I have seen people make an effort to drop racism language, cissexist language, sexist language, etc. from their vocabularies. Yes not all and not nearly enough, but still there was a visible segment of the community that made this effort.

The same cannot be said for the effort people put in to remove ableist vocabulary from their language. Sure some of the big ones like R*t*rd that many of us have known since childhood was a slur, but st*pid, Id*ot, Cr*t*n, M*r*n, l*me, Cr*zy, for those I haven’t seen as much effort, even from people who claim to care. It’s disheartening.

Every day I scroll through my newsfeed and I’m bombarded by these words from people who are my friends, who claim to care about me and people like me.

Do you really think we don’t notice?

Many of us are just too exhausted to have the same argument again and again. When many of us struggle to survive in a world that in some cases is actively trying to kill us, often through neglect (think flashing lights, they are fucking everywhere!!), it can feel like too much to tell yet another person: “Hey actually that’s ableist.”